WALNUT CREEK — When a Walnut Creek policeman responded to a 911 hangup call last November, the driver of a parked car explained the call away; he told the officer his ex-girlfriend had been following him, trying to start an altercation, so he called the police.

In the backseat was a young woman “crying hysterically,” according to the officer’s report. She was unable to speak, but slyly typed a two-word message on her phone and turned her screen toward the officer. Her message read, “He’s lying.”

By the end of the police investigation, the driver, 22-year-old Amani Dupre Jackson, had been charged with human trafficking, assault and domestic violence. By February, he and two women had been charged in an alleged criminal conspiracy to convince the victim not to testify, and to delete evidence off Jackson’s phone.

Police describe Jackson as a member of the Del Paso Heights Bloods, a subset of the Bloods criminal gang based in Sacramento. Jackson has pleaded not guilty and his trial has been set for mid-April, according to court records.

Court records describe Jackson’s November arrest in Walnut Creek, saying officers were first called to a parking lot near the corner of Arroyo Way and Civic Drive after an “unidentified female” called 911 and hung up. All the dispatcher could hear was a woman crying and a man asking where his phone was.

After reading the woman’s message to him, the officer — listed in court records only as “Officer Clemente” — separated Jackson and the woman, and interviewed her. She told police Jackson had punched her in the head and choked her for 10 seconds.

Jackson denied all this when questioned by police, saying it was another woman — a family member — who had fought with the alleged victim, and that he was trying to break it up. He said he called 911 and was more or less acting as a peacemaker.

In a subsequent interview, the woman told police that Jackson had spent two years in prison, and before that was “pimping her out,” according to an officer’s statement. She said he would drive her to San Francisco, or Oakland, drop her off at street corners with a box of condoms, and tell her not to call for a ride until all the condoms were gone.

She usually made around $1,000 to $1,500 a night, and Jackson would have sex with her if she met her quota, the woman reportedly told police. She said the argument that led to the fight in Walnut Creek happened because she had refused to go to the San Pablo/Richmond area and perform “tricks,” or sex acts for money.

But the story doesn’t quite end there. In February, a grand jury indicted two women — Channel Jackson and Essence Littlepage — on charges of conspiracy and dissuading a witness, for allegedly plotting with Jackson to get the victim to change her statement. In phone calls from county jail, Jackson reportedly also told them to delete evidence from his phone and other electronic devices.

“If they get all this (expletive) information, it will be (expletive) over,” he said on one call, according to authorities.

Police checked Jackson’s background, and discovered he had convictions for the same crimes he was now once again under suspicion of. There was a 2015 conviction for human trafficking in Los Angeles, as well as 2017 in Sacramento for domestic violence, gun possession and failing to register as a sex offender, court records show.

In the 2015 case, Jackson was convicted of human trafficking of a minor. He was arrested in that case the prior year, as part of a major anti-trafficking operation by Long Beach police.

Nate Gartrell covers crime, politics, and corruption in Contra Costa County. He joined the Bay Area News Group in 2014. Outside of journalism, he doesn't do much. He aspires to visit all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums. Reach him at 925-779-7174.

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